“The 71-year-old actor … believes the decline is due to the dwindling tradition of amateur dramatics. ‘Standards of performance are being reduced,’ he said. ‘Once someone declares they are a professional actor, they can now perform wherever they want. There is no system any more’.”
Tag: 09.26.10
Are Canada’s Canadian Content Radio Rules Still Necessary?
“As indie music scenes in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal have flourished in the past decade, building enthusiastic audiences in Canada and internationally without much support from radio play, some in the industry have come to consider the regulations largely irrelevant.”
World’s Longest-Running Live Music Club To Close
“The world’s longest-surviving live music venue is to close because of the soaring overheads faced by its owner Jeff Horton, whose father gave the club its name when he took over in 1964.”
Why Is Andrew Lloyd Webber Doing The Wizard Of Oz?
“For more than 70 years, the original film version of L Frank Baum’s children’s story has stood as such a monument to wholesomeness and innocence that hardly anyone remembers what a nightmare it was to make, or the toll it took on its participants.”
Grandson Slams Plans For Pasternak Musuem
The grandson of the author of Dr Zhivago has savaged plans to build a museum opposite the Kremlin, saying the design resembles “a Central Asian regional communist party headquarters”.
Cairo Museum Employee Behind Van Gogh Theft
Egypt’s foreign minister says an employee was to blame. “The head of the culture ministry’s fine arts sector, Mohsen Shaalan, and other senior officials are standing trial over the theft on charges of negligence. The Dutch masterpiece, valued at more than 50 million dollars, was cut out of its frame.”
Should Private Companies Be Running Our Public Libraries?
A private company, “Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.”
Wagner – It’s Opera For The People
“Perhaps we’ve seen too many commercials with toffs in penguin suits to accept the fact that operagoers are, in fact, a motley middle-class lot. And the Wagner audience is the motliest of all — emeritus professors sit side by side with “Ring”-loving schoolteachers, fanatic record collectors, neophyte opera mavens and that woman wearing a Valkyrie helmet.”
Embarrassing – The Lehman Collection Painting That Failed To Sell
“Damien Hirst’s 1993 We’ve got Style, (The Vessel Collection, blue/green) failed to find a buyer at a pre-sale estimate circling $1 million. Ironically, Hirst had a record $198 million one-artist auction in London on the same day in 2008, Sept. 15, that Lehman filed for bankruptcy.”
Rutgers’ Most Popular Elective? Dance
“The course’s enrollment has exploded, growing from 53 students in James’ first class in 2007 to more than 1,000 in four sections this semester. It has become one of the most popular electives on campus, in part because of James’ irreverent sense of humor (not to mention his salty language).”